Manchester
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin said recruitment would begin immediately for a new director, chief of staff and director of nursing and patient care services. He also announced a task force was being formed to explore bringing a full-service veterans hospital to New Hampshire.
He highlighted $30 million in spending for expanded facilities, repairs to buildings damaged in a recent flood and a new center that helps veterans access Choice, which offers them federally paid medical care outside the VA.
Shulkin toured the medical center on Friday and met with veterans, staff as well as whistleblowers who’d complained of poor care there.
He already has removed the hospital’s top two leaders and ordered a review and an investigation by the VA’s inspector general after the Boston Globe reported last month on a whistleblower complaint filed by physicians alleging substandard care at state’s only medical center for veterans.
They described a fly-infested operating room, surgical instruments that weren’t always sterilized and patients whose conditions were ignored or weren’t treated properly. They also accused administrators of essentially dismantling the hospital’s cardiology and surgical programs.
“What we need here is a new leadership team that will help bring this organization into the future and meet the needs of the veterans here,” Shulkin said. “We have not found there has been anything wrong that they have done. These are good, dedicated professionals who came to help veterans. But there are times in an organization, and this is my call, that we need new leadership teams.”
During his meeting with several of the nearly dozen whistleblowers, Shulkin listened as they went over a long list of demands. Describing a toxic working environment with many problems tied to issues at the VA nationally, the whistleblowers called on Shulkin to do a top-to-bottom assessment of all management at the Manchester VA.
They also wanted assurances that the hiring of a chief of staff and medical director would be transparent and include input from staff. They also wanted Manchester to become a full-service hospital and opposed any push to combine it with the facilities in White River Junction.
“These are the issues you find when you have hospitals that are complex organizations,” Shulkin said. “I wasn’t surprised by any of them. What I was surprised about was why it was taking so long to resolve these and why the clinicians, the whistleblowers, weren’t being listened to.”
Shulkin said he did not find the whistleblowers “unreasonable,” adding, “They want to do better for their patients.”
In a town hall meeting last month, veterans complained to Manchester VA Interim Director Alfred Montoya about shoddy care, misdiagnoses and frustration over inadequate mental health services. Montoya told them about several measures he already has taken, including an analysis of services not provided at the Manchester facility and the recruiting of a part-time cardiologist, and the veterans said they would give him a chance.